But there is one custom which Asirvadam the Brahmin observes in common with the Pariah, and that is the solemn ceremonial of Death. When his time comes, he dies, is burned, and presently forgotten; and it is a consolation for his ever having been at all, that some one is sure to be the richer and happier and freer for his ceasing to be. True, he may assume new earthly conditions, may pass into other vexatious shapes of life; but the change must ever be for the better in respect of the interests of those who have suffered by the powers and capabilities of the shape which he relinquishes. He may become a snake; but then he is easily scotched, or fooled out of his fangs with a cunning charmer's tom-tom;--he may pass into the foul feathers of an indiscriminately gluttonous adjutant-bird; but some day a bone will choke him;--his soul may creep under the mangy skin of a Pariah dog, and be kicked out of compounds by scullions; he may be condemned to the abominable offices of a crow at the burning ghauts, a jackal by the wells of Thuggee, or a rat in sewers; but he can never again be such a nuisance, such a sore offence to the minds and hearts of men, as when he was Asirvadam the Brahmin. Fortunate indeed will he be, if the low, deep curses of all whom he has oppressed, betrayed, insulted, shall not have availed against him in his last hour. "Mayest thou never have a friend to lay thee on the ground when thou diest!"--no imprecation so fierce, so fell, as that; even Asirvadam the Brahmin abates his cruel greed, when some poor Soodra client, bled of his last anna, thinks of his sick wife, and the darling cow that must be sold at last, and grows desperate. "Mayest thou have no wife to sprinkle the spot with cow-dung where thy corpse shall lie, and to spread the unspotted cloth; nor any cow, her horns tipped with rings of brass, and her neck garlanded with flowers, to lead thee, holding by her tail, through pleasant paths to the land of Yama! May no Purohita come to strew thy bier with the holy herb, nor any next of kin be near to whisper the last mantra!"